Ring Worlds. Feasible or simply "I want them so I can have them" nonsense?

[BIos_Reaper]

Ring worlds, shield worlds (micro-dyson spheres) and the likes, are they viable or are they just something we use willy-nilly without limitation? The sheer mass, resource drainage and energy requirements needed. I have seen giant ones before, such as in Halo, and read about them in fictional storybooks, but there has always been a logical limitation to their size.

Something ringing an entire system, a sun or a gas giant seems wholly unfeasible and dumb to me, sure the one around a sun might make sense if you rely on solar radiation for power, since its gonna be there for a long time yet, might as well use it.

But what about mining ones? When the world runs out of resource, do you just leave the damn thing there? How are you going to move something so gigantic? All in all, this is just an open question topic.

Feel free to join in, I don't have any actual physics or scientific knowledge to lean on so I'm sure this will be a wholly one-sided discussion anyway... Either way, join in if you want, I'll try not to get in your way.

[Samantha Arrow]

:gleeface: Dyson Spheres FTW!!

In my own universe, I made it so that an ancient and long gone race was able to construct one. The Seeder race of the Lightfireans to be precise.

The Lightfireans found one, but had to reprogram their sensors not to store data, because the sphere is so damn huge would overload the hard-drives instantaneously.

[Gusto-Pastel]

Personally I think ring-worlds and Dyson Spheres are a massive waste of resources, for a number of reasons.

1. Dimensions. Sci-fi writers never have any sense of scale. The sheer amount of stuff you'd need to construct one is astronomical. Space is BIG. You'd probably need to disassemble a few gas giants and borrow all the material from the Asteroid Belt, Kuiper Belt and Oort cloud to construct one around Sol at a decent distance.
2. Physics. Apart from the fact that the material needed to make it not fall apart just by sitting there doesn't exist yet, you then have orbital resonances to consider.
3. Economics. Say there is a material that does the job. It's probably very expensive to manufacture, and you've got to manufacture enough of it to form a complete sphere around the solar system. Even just the cost of a ring would dwarf the world's GDP ridiculously.
4. Culture. Would you really want to block out the entire night sky of stars? Can you imagine how utterly Monty-Burns-esque soul-destroying that would be?
5. Efficiency. We'd get far more benefit from becoming a more energy-efficient society than one that needs a Dyson Sphere to get the energy it needs. A society focussed on being energy efficient would be far more adaptable and footloose than one that needs to capture all the radiation from its home star.

[Samantha Arrow]

I wouldn't be so quick to consider that no-one would try to built one just because it's not logical. Look back into Earth's history. There's virtually no logical reason the Egyptian's needed to build super-massive pyramids, but they did it all the same.

[Rakaziel]

A ring world would not make sense as a power plant, there are cheaper ways. But it could make sense as an interstellar weapon, providing the light for a laser for example, or a giant particle accelerator, if it can be weaponized.

Though, for the laser a sufficiently large mirror satellite system would also work and might be cheaper.

[Gusto-Pastel]

The Pyramids didn't block out the sky or consume more material than there was in the Solar System :V A giant system-wide ring particle accelerator -might- be feasible, because it would use a tiny fraction of the material that a Dyson sphere would, but considering that you're building something that takes light over an hour to travel around once, it's still going to need a LOT of stuff.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Another problem is that such structures aren't in orbit, so you need to worry about stationkeeping -- Niven eventually had to add attitude jets and supermagnets (to maneuver the sun) to the Ringworld.

Banks's Culture orbitals seem slightly more practical if no more sensible (tho who can say what makes sense to a post-scarcity society: the very ridiculousness of the habitat may be the entire reason for building it, conspicuous consumption on a cosmic scale).

I'm in favour of Dyson sphere-style power plants, but only on the efficiency grounds that all that energy is currently being wasted. Dismantling the Sun so you can conserve it's fuel would be even better.

[Dusty]

A much more feasible method of generating large amounts of solar power is a large network of solar arrays arranged in a sphere around the sun. It takes far less material, the transfer of the energy could possibly be through some sort of Microwave beam method, and the actual system could be built with mostly todays tech if the entire world got behind it.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Umm isn't that precisely what a Dyson sphere is?

[Dusty]

Umm isn't that precisely what a Dyson sphere is?

Maybe I didn't say that right. A series of separate platforms each made up of a large solar array. They don't cover the entire area around a start but instead collect sun from all sides.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Such a "sphere" would be a system of orbiting solar power satellites meant to completely encompass a star and capture most or all of its energy output.

In many fictional accounts, the Dyson sphere concept is most often interpreted as an artificial hollow sphere of matter around a star. This perception is a misinterpretation of Dyson's original concept.

I hadn't realised the scifi version had diverged from Dyson's idea -- the only story i've read featuring one of these was The Time Ships, which was crazy in all kinds of other ways too.

[Gusto-Pastel]

I suppose the conservationist in me doesn't want to do anything too drastic with what we're given, which would include completely enclosing the sun in solar panels, breaking down the sun to conserve its fuel, disassembling planets for construction materials, converting the human race into cyborg transhumans, etc. At least not until we've reached that elusive post-scarcity society :V Until then I think efficiency, sustainability and careful advancement should be top priorities. I'm very much one in favour of a hippocratic oath for scientists if you haven't guessed by now :V

[Wolfgang of Borg]

I'm very much one in favour of a hippocratic oath for scientists if you haven't guessed by now :V

No i hadn't.. that's an interesting idea! That fanfic i like plays with something similar, when a character learns of the Manhattan Project for the first time and can't understand why the scientists didn't form a conspiracy.
What sort of ground would your version cover?

EDIT: is the idea that such an oath is needed a common thing among scientists?

[Gusto-Pastel]

No i hadn't.. that's an interesting idea! That fanfic i like plays with something similar, when a character learns of the Manhattan Project for the first time and can't understand why the scientists didn't form a conspiracy.
What sort of ground would your version cover?

EDIT: is the idea that such an oath is needed a common thing among scientists?

THAT FANFIC IS AMAZING.

Anyway, I don't know how common the idea is, but basically I would be in favour of something that forbids people trained in the scientific method from using their skills to directly harm, or by the sale of such skills to an employer indirectly harm another human being, or using their skills to directly or indirectly bring net harm to other animals and the Earth's ecosystems, and puts upon people trained in the scientific method the responsibility to use their skills for the betterment of mankind specifically and generally, and to conserve and enrich the Earth's ecosystems.

This would basically mean that trained scientists can't intentionally develop weapons (sorry, no gauss rifles, laser guns nanological bombs), can't intentionally cause environmental catastrophes, and have the responsibility to use their work to protect or enrich mankind and our environment (eg. if there's a meteor heading for the planet, stop trying to figure out what happened before the Big Bang and help try to knock it away. Or a more current example, why aren't more scientists trying to combat this mass extinction we have going on right now?).

[Nelle Kozera]

THAT FANFIC IS AMAZING.

Anyway, I don't know how common the idea is, but basically I would be in favour of something that forbids people trained in the scientific method from using their skills to directly harm, or by the sale of such skills to an employer indirectly harm another human being, or using their skills to directly or indirectly bring net harm to other animals and the Earth's ecosystems, and puts upon people trained in the scientific method the responsibility to use their skills for the betterment of mankind specifically and generally, and to conserve and enrich the Earth's ecosystems.

This would basically mean that trained scientists can't intentionally develop weapons (sorry, no gauss rifles, laser guns nanological bombs), can't intentionally cause environmental catastrophes, and have the responsibility to use their work to protect or enrich mankind and our environment (eg. if there's a meteor heading for the planet, stop trying to figure out what happened before the Big Bang and help try to knock it away. Or a more current example, why aren't more scientists trying to combat this mass extinction we have going on right now?).

Well, as far as mankind going. I don't see this happening, like at all. Nor would take such an oath, force is necessary to protect something you care about.

[Brome Teks]

Ringworlds, (Though maybe not full star-circling ones) would actually be pretty feasible for a civilization somewhere between tech levels 2 and 3 (Humanity is currently about a .72). Here, they would have the energy resources and physical resources required to build ringworlds. And at that point, they'd have spread to enough worlds to have a budget capable of constructing it. or, they could just spread its construction out as a generations-spanning project. I'm not going to try and argue for Dyson spheres, because I think they're highly impractical (A Dyson array/swarm is another matter).

As for actual construction and design, the materials we might need already actually exist. By my calculations, a 10 meter radius beam of carbon nanotubes would be able to hold a ringworld section of solid titanium that was 5 kilometers on a side. All of the force exerted outwards on the superstructure would be exerted into tension, and with the frankly insane tensile strength of carbon nanotubes, building megastructures out of them is actually not all that difficult. Who knows what even stronger materials a more advanced race could build? Or how cheaply they could make them?
And building a ringworld for mining is rather stupid, because most of the mined material would have to be used to make the ringworld in the first place. And as you point out BIos, it'd be rather hard to move afterwards.

Anyways, onto the uses of ringworlds. (Again, I'm disregarding dyson spheres.) RingWorlds, being artificial structures, Can be very useful to act as controlled environment for any number of purposes. Want to see what happens when two ecosystems mix? Want to try seeing if species A is compatible for long term survival in Environment B? You can test these by making simulations on the ringworld's surface before you try terraforming, to avoid a major terraforming disaster. On top of that, there are all manner of toroidal experiments that can be fit in the ring, or any other large large scale experiments of any kind that might normally take a bit more space than can be found on a planet.

For example, the AGSF Nubian, when completed, is going to be home to a hyper-light collider for research purposes, numerous environmental experiments, and then a vast amount of research facilities for any universities or corporations within the AGSF that want some space on the Nubian. Imagine if Black mesa had been in a better controlled and contained environment? But I digress. All the AGSF Nubian is is one big-ass scientific research and development center for large scale or particularly hazardous experiments.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Wait, i thought BIos was talking about building one as a *result* of mining, like after a planet's surface resources had all been extracted you pulverize it to get at the delicious innards (presumably by increasing the angular momentum until it breaks apart) then form the resulting debris into habitats?

Yeah increased living space seems like the main reason to want to build one, and that was ultimately the explanation Niven used: some extremely war-like people from the centre of the galaxy wanted lots*10^6 of land for their decedents, since whenever they tried living on planets population pressure inevitably eventually lead to cycles of near-total destruction and slow rebuilding.

Gusto: YES IT IS.

The problem is that any tech might be used as a weapon, and humans are way too tribal to act only in the interests of the species as a whole (let alone the whole biosphere).

[Tha_Pig]

I wouldn't be so quick to consider that no-one would try to built one just because it's not logical. Look back into Earth's history. There's virtually no logical reason the Egyptian's needed to build super-massive pyramids, but they did it all the same.

The definition of logic changes from one culture to another. For the Ancient Egyptians, building the pyramids was not just perfectly logic, but absolutely necessary. Building pyramids seem absurd for us today in the same way driving cars will make no sense for people 5000 years from now.

[Tha_Pig]

Maybe I didn't say that right. A series of separate platforms each made up of a large solar array. They don't cover the entire area around a start but instead collect sun from all sides.

That's exactly what Dyson meant. He never proposed the idea of a full sphere covering a star with a continuous surface, but an array of structures orbiting the star. He was actually amused by the way his idea was misinterpreted by popular culture (specially the Star Trek episode showing a star hidden inside a massive sphere, which he called nonsense)

[Gusto-Pastel]

Well, as far as mankind going. I don't see this happening, like at all. Nor would take such an oath, force is necessary to protect something you care about.

A type of oath of scientific ethics is actually gaining ground and being adopted in a few places already - there's the Pugwash Pledge in the USA, and the UK government has already adopted one compiled by Sir David King. Granted these are more about honest practice and justified, responsible work than forbidding intentional harm and imposing the responsibility to better mankind, but they're there. There's also talk of similar oaths for academic and business professionals, which, when added to scientists and medical professionals (who've had the oath for thousands of years already), comprises the positions in society that require the most moral restraint. It's part ceremony, part code of honour, part "look guys, this is what you SHOULDN'T do". Though I really don't know what you're going on about by bringing force into this, are you advocating a police state or something?

[Nelle Kozera]

A type of oath of scientific ethics is actually gaining ground and being adopted in a few places already - there's the Pugwash Pledge in the USA, and the UK government has already adopted one compiled by Sir David King. Granted these are more about honest practice and justified, responsible work than forbidding intentional harm and imposing the responsibility to better mankind, but they're there. There's also talk of similar oaths for academic and business professionals, which, when added to scientists and medical professionals (who've had the oath for thousands of years already), comprises the positions in society that require the most moral restraint. It's part ceremony, part code of honour, part "look guys, this is what you SHOULDN'T do". Though I really don't know what you're going on about by bringing force into this, are you advocating a police state or something?

Nope, not at all. I merely look at history, War breeds advancement Nuclear power, the space race, many of the largest scientific endeavors in history? Funded by war. "Why am I going to fund this project if it doesn't help me?" Is the view of the people that pay for these projects. Apollo, The Manhattan Project, Sputnik, etc etc. War may be bad, but i'd much rather be on the side with the largest and baddest gun, even if I had to help make it. War is an inevitable part of human nature, nor is it going away anytime soon.

With such things as war, or getting an advantage over another country. Advancement is ~0 if only little bit more than 0. Would the US have pored billions of dollars into the moon program because a board of scientists want it and may yield nothing more than data? Or because doing so would prove that we have a massive technological advantage over the Soviets? The choice is simple if your the one spending the money.

[Gusto-Pastel]

That's part missing my point, and part what I meant about my version being a bit too utopian, because of course scientists are going to be made develop new weapons. Though if you think the only, or even main, reason science happens is because it's part of the civilisation-scale game of one-up-manship, then we might as well top ourselves now, because that means climate change isn't getting solved any time soon. That said, from my observation of the current state of the world, we're in the midst of a paradigm shift on an unparalleled scale here - the last hundred years has seen such things as active resistance to war, awareness of ourselves as a mere component of the world, a footnote on the history of the universe thusfar, art for art's sake, science for science's sake, globalisation, cooperation never seen before. There may never be another world war at this rate. We're approaching Sagan's hypothetical point in history when a civilisation will cohese and start towards the stars or fall apart.

As for my original point, it was just being in favour of an oath that makes scientists work honourably and with justification, rather than selfishly and amorally.

[Brome Teks]

As for my original point, it was just being in favour of an oath that makes scientists work honourably and with justification, rather than selfishly and amorally.

Well see, thing is, if a clever and/or well read person wants to act selfishly and amorally, some oath isn't going to stop them from doing so. By the very definition of an amoral person, they aren't going to listen to petty oaths like that. And if they need to get funding for it, they can spin it as a good thing. And let us not forget, some of the worst things in science have been done with the best intentions (Of course, those things are totally subjective).

Wow, this thread has been totally jacked. =P

[BIos_Reaper]

Not really. I've been reading every single post up until now and I see many points. There isn't much point to making research stations or habitads however, that link I saw earlier mentioned smaller, orbiting models that are much smaller but more stable, more easily constructed, in technically anything this big is a huge engineering feat and all, but really difficult to maintain. Everyone here has valid points, though why everybody is discussing moral codes for scientists I do not know, since technically science would cry out in anger for being limited by a moral code, I mean science should be guided by ethics someone said, it should not however be hobbled by it, though some research I admit I am wholly against but others I encourage fully, stem-cell research is one of those.

[Gusto-Pastel]

I'll make a separate thread for the sidetracked discussion :B as for the original point, I still think Dyson Spheres as science fiction portrays them are a load of crap (one of the main reasons I don't trust the futuretimeline.net website), because apart from being impractical, they'd also be... well would you really want to put a great big wall between you and the sun, or between us and everywhere beyond Mars? Just seems like cartoonish supervillainy. Ring worlds... more practical but still a long way off to be built on any sort of great scale, and apart from being a great scientific experiment, they'd not have a whole lot of value. However, other superstructures like Dyson arrays and system-wide particle accelerators seem far more practical, efficient and beneficial. That said, they'd still have their perils - all the flotsam drifting about in space would have to hit such massive structures eventually, Dyson arrays could block sunlight heading towards more distant colonised planets, orbital resonances could have an effect on a system-wide ring, etc.

[Wolfgang of Borg]

Sorry Bios, we were talking about ethics because Gusto objected that demolishing the Sun might be bad for the environment.

A Dyson sphere is a bit more sensible if you don't make it rigid --imagine a really big balloon of solar-sail fabric, kept inflated by radiation pressure-- tho since it'd be made of the least dense material possible i'm not sure what use it would be. Peter Watts wrote quite a good story about a sentient one (scroll down a bit).

[Gusto-Pastel]

Well demolishing the sun is a bit like transhumanism, is it really the way forward and those who oppose it mere luddites, or is it crazed fantasy? That said, I can't decide whether I'm genuinely opposed to ideas like that, or just think they're boring and make for crap sci-fi.

[Tha_Pig]

I'm not a physicist, I'm thinking as a fiction writer here... But I think the whole Dyson sphere thing is impractical. About 98% of the entire Solar System's mass is composed by the Sun, with the added masses of all other planets being only 2%. That means that to build any kind of structure around the Sun, even a very thin one, you would need an amount of material greater than the sum of all the planets. Even if you could somehow dismantle every planet (many of which are mostly made of gas) and use every molecule in the construction of the sphere, you would need to go around and collect extra material somewhere else (dismantling and shipping an extra star system?)

The amount of energy needed for such a task would be enormous... But we already agreed the purpose of the Dyson Sphere was to obtain energy from the Sun. So we run into a paradox: A civilization capable of constructing the Sphere would need to have an alternative source of almost unlimited energy... in which case, they would not need the Sphere in the first place!

[Wolfgang of Borg]

( Ok so i really only mentioned the light-sail thing as an excuse to link to the Watts story :b )

Well demolishing the sun is a bit like transhumanism, is it really the way forward and those who oppose it mere luddites, or is it crazed fantasy? That said, I can't decide whether I'm genuinely opposed to ideas like that, or just think they're boring and make for crap sci-fi.

Personally i think star lifting (aka Sun disassembly) would make for interesting (albeit fantastic) stories, since it implies that the people doing it have recognised that interstellar travel is unfeasible but still want their society to continue for as long as possible, and are thinking in timescales of billions of years. Experiencing extremely alien worldviews is something i love about the genre.

Transhumanism i see as much more of a real world issue, but again one which scifi is uniquely placed to explore. What is scifi for (aside from escapism) if not taking apart present day trends, extrapolating, and exploring the consequences?

[karakris]

Hmmmm - not sure about any of these

I used to like the idea of a Ringworld - but it was only made possible in Larry Niven's fertile imagination - by having a meand of matter transmutation.
He had his people use this to convert a lot of the mass into some super-hyperstrength material - to form the base material ( metal ) for his Ringworld.

Now - I am in a Sci Fi play-by-post Game - in fact I am now the G.M.
We have FAST FTL Drives - and it is now 2137.
We have come against some nasty evil Aliens with a Slave Empire which is trying to conquer the entier Galaxy. One of their impotant Star Systems had a massive Alderson Disc - which we have effectively destroyed.

We are still sticking to Colonising Planets in nearby Star Systems - and Asteroids in some of the Systems.
We are Terroforming Mars - and we have started Terraforming Venus.

The leader of one of the Friendly Alien Peoples just recently suggested merging Neptune and Jupiter to make a new Brown Dwarf Star, and putting the Moons of both Jupiter and Neptune into orbit around it, to make some of them habitable Planetoids ( Dwarf Planets ).

Any thoughts on that idea ??